"Think different" became Apple's creed during the late Steve Jobs' reign as CEO. Now, chief executive Tim Cook is embracing the idea while making decisions that would have seemed crazy to his fabled predecessor.

Apple's pending purchase of headphone maker and streaming music company Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion is just the latest example of Cook's deviation from Jobs, who had so much confidence in his company's innovative powers that he saw little sense in spending large amounts of money on acquisitions.

Cook became chief executive in late August 2011, roughly six weeks before Jobs died. But in a number of ways, he is just beginning to put his own imprint on Apple. Cook is straying from Jobs' cash-hoarding habits by committing to return $130 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks. He has orchestrated a company stock split and agreed to match employees' charitable contributions up to $10,000 annually.

The shift in management philosophy has resulted in an odd twist: Apple Inc.'s pace of innovation has slowed and it now looks more like a conventional company than the corporate rebel Jobs tried to cultivate. Instead of releasing revolutionary gadgets such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple has been mostly upgrading existing products and figuring out ways to manage its bulging bank account.

Cook has repeatedly sought to assure investors and customers that Apple remains focused on inventing "insanely great" products, even though the company's last breakthrough, the iPad, came out in April 2010 — 18 months before Jobs died of cancer.

"We've got some great things that we're working on that I'm very, very proud of and very, very excited about," Cook told analysts last month. "But, for us, we care about every detail and when you care about every detail and getting it right, it takes a bit longer to do that and that's always been the case."

Wall Street is still taking a wait-and-see attitude with Cook. Apple's stock ended last week at $585.24, well below its peak of $705.07 reached in September 2012, but still a 56 percent gain since Cook became CEO. That's just slightly behind the 60 percent increase in the Standard & Poor's 500 index during the same period. Despite the lag, Apple's market value is the highest in the world at about $500 billion.